"...explores the connection between the U.S. military presence abroad and the advancement of civil rights in the U.S. We investigate the role that African-American GIs played in carrying the civil rights movement to Germany, which was host to the largest contingent of U.S. troops deployed outside the U.S."

Hearing before the Committee on Indian Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Eighth Congress, second session, on contributions of Native American code talkers in American military history, September 22, 2004, Washington, DC.

"This collection focuses on President Truman's decision to desegregate the U.S. Armed Forces. It includes 247 documents totaling 1,187 pages, covering the years 1938-1953. " Provided by The Harry S. Truman Library & Museum

"On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, committing the government to integrating the segregated military."

"Asian Pacific Americans have made lasting contributions to America’s wartime efforts. These seven stories are from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, with special emphasis on the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the “Go for Broke” outfit of Japanese-Americans who fought valiantly in Europe during World War II. Many of these men put their lives on the line for their country while their families were confined to internment camps back in the States."

View stories alphabetically by name of person or view by themes such as: POWs in Korea or Vietnam, War's End: VE-Day, Woman at War, African Americans: The Next Generation, Willing to Serve: American Indians etc.

"Tosh Yasutake is a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American born in 1922 in Seattle. His sister Mitsuye May (Yasutake) Yamada is a Nisei born in Japan in 1923. Their father, Jack Kaichiro Yasutake, was employed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service as an interpreter for twenty years. On December 7, 1941, the father was arrested and interned as an enemy alien at a Department of Justice camp, along with other Issei (first generation) community leaders. Tosh attended the University of Washington before being removed from Seattle with his mother, May, and two brothers in spring 1942. The family was held at Puyallup Assembly Center, Washington, and then the Minidoka, Idaho, incarceration camp. Tosh worked as a hospital attendant and laboratory technician in Minidoka. In the first interview excerpt with Tosh, he explains his decision to volunteer for the U.S. Army in March 1943. In the second excerpt, Tosh and May recount how they received permission to travel from Minidoka to visit their father at U.S. Department of Justice internment camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico, before Tosh reports for duty. While serving as a medic with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Tosh was wounded during combat in southern France in 1944. May left Minidoka to attend college in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1944, their mother and younger brother joined their father at the Crystal City, Texas, internment camp."

"documents and creates a better awareness of the contributions of U.S. Latinos and Latinas of the WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War generations. The project was created in 1999 by UT journalism professor Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez and initially focused solely on the WWII generation. At the time, it was known as the U.S. Latino & Latina WWII Oral History Project. In 2010, the project expanded into the Korean War and the Vietnam War generations of Latinos and Latinas, made possible through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services."

"The order established the Bureau of U.S. Colored Troops, and after that date most existing and all newly recruited African American units were incorporated and administered with the bureau’s supervision."

"In January, 1863—the month of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the second year of the Civil War—the United States began allowing black soldiers to enlist in the Union army. The army needed more manpower or, as African-American soldier James Henry Gooding put it with bitter eloquence, “more food for its ravenous maw.” By 1865 approximately one tenth of all Union soldiers and sailors were African-American, and about eighty percent of these came from the slave states. Black soldiers fought with notable valor. When captured they faced much greater brutality from Confederate soldiers than did their white comrades. Union service, however, was no guarantee of equal treatment. Black soldiers in the Union army served in segregated troops, often faced menial assignments, and received lower pay—$10 per month to white soldiers’ $13. In this letter to President Lincoln, Gooding, writing on behalf of himself and his fellow black soldiers, protested these conditions." GMU History Matters

"A collection of first-hand accounts drawn from the extensive records of the National Archives. It explains how black military service helped to destroy slavery; it is a social history of black soldiers; it explains how soldiering shaped the life of black people during and after the war. "